by Dan Kolbet
"Anything."
"That you'll still be madly in love with me when I tell you my secret."
"Oh, man. The bar is set pretty high with secrets around here," I say.
"Don't worry, it's just one. Hurry back then and I'll tell you."
"You're such a tease!" I say tickling her side and making her double over in laughter.
"Do you agree to my terms?" she quickly recovers.
"Yes, I will still be in love with you when you tell me your horrible secret."
"I can't wait. I have to tell you now . . . I used to be a man!" she says laughing.
"Sheesh, and I thought it was going to be something big."
Chapter 51
Sterling, Colorado
I wasn't going to show up at Alex's house without doing a little bit of research first. Google is a wonderful thing, unless you'd like to keep your privacy, then you're pretty much screwed. I typed in Alex's address which I'd copied off the postcard I'd seen at Ella's house. As the map zoomed in on the town, I saw that it was a small, isolated place in the northeast corner of Colorado. The biggest thing on the map was Sterling Correctional Center, which seemed as big as the town itself. Sterling was surrounded by mountains, but looked pretty much flat, with a highway slicing through it.
I clicked on the street view feature and saw that Alex's house was a white colonial with big windows and several low-hanging trees in the front yard. I pushed the view around the screen hoping to find something interesting, but nothing stood out. There was a driveway up the side of the house that led to a two-car garage at the rear of the property.
Finding nothing of interest, I spun the view 180 degrees to get a better idea of what the neighborhood was like. The surrounding houses were of similar size. Not dilapidated, but weathered.
Then I got an idea.
* * *
As I pull my blue Chevy Malibu rental car into Sterling, I'm immediately taken aback by how rundown the town looks. The images from Google were taken in the summer, when the trees were full of green leaves, masking the beaten down buildings behind them. There is a thin layer of snow on the ground now, from what looked like the remains of a storm days ago. The streets are clear and traffic is light. I navigate my way into the parking lot of the municipal water district. The red brick building has a small parking lot adjacent to the street. The lot is nearly empty. I park between two SUV's likely owned by employees of the water district. People, who at 2:00 in the afternoon are probably already counting the minutes until their shifts are over and they can go home to their families.
I grab a magazine from the passenger seat and pretended to read it. To anyone passing by I am simply killing time in a public parking lot. A parking lot that just so happens to be directly across the street from Alex Mackey's house. My rental blends right in with the other cars in the lot and I plan to keep it that way.
For more than an hour there was no movement noticeable from inside the house. I begin to question what exactly I am doing sitting out in front of this house. What could I actually accomplish in my little stakeout? Then about 3:20, two boys with backpacks round the nearby corner and zip up the driveway to the back of the house. I hear a screen door slam as they enter. The postcard photograph I saw at Ella's house wasn't old, and I'd memorized the faces of all four of the subjects. The boys were Alex's sons, John and Robert, returning from school.
This confirms for me that I have found the right place. If I am lucky, Alex will return sometime after 5:00 from whatever job he holds, and I can confront him. I don't want to be in Colorado any longer than is required. I want to go home as soon as this is done.
Moments later I hear the screen door slam again, but this time it is followed by a car emerging from the garage. A dark green, late model Toyota Camry slowly backs out of the driveway. As it backs onto the street, the driver's window is nearly even with my front bumper. Piloting the car is Alex's wife, Brenda, who I recognize from the postcard. She's a heavy-set brunette with a round face. Alex isn't in the car, but the boys are in the back seat.
I have only a few seconds to decide what to do. If I follow the car I will have no way of knowing if Alex is home or not, since he could slip in while I am gone. It was already getting dark, I could sneak around the back of the house and have a look around, but what good would that do? Leave footprints in the snow and put the family on edge? No thanks.
Not putting another thought to it, I decide to tail them and see where it leads me.
Brenda is a cautious driver. She does the speed limit and uses her turn signal. This means I have to keep way back from her for fear of being noticed. I nearly lose them after getting stuck behind a red light. I gun it when the light turns green and luckily see Brenda and the boys getting out of the car at the Sterling JC Penney, just off Highway 138.
I hesitate, but go ahead and follow them into the store. Frankly stalking someone doesn't come second nature to me and it's a little strange. When they walk down one aisle or thumbed through a rack of clothes, I watch from a safe distance while pretending to be shopping myself. The boys try on jeans, modeling them for their mother. Each boy leaves the store with a pair of jeans and a shirt.
This isn't getting me anywhere, but I continue to follow, thinking that maybe they will meet Alex for dinner at a restaurant or an event somewhere. After a trip through the Sears store hardware section and buying a full cart of groceries at the Sun Mart, the family turns back home, unloads the car through the back of the house and disappears for the night.
At the Sun Mart, I bought a deli sandwich and a few energy drinks, and another magazine, knowing that I might be stuck in the car for a while. I guess this is what a stakeout feels like. A very boring stakeout of a totally normal family.
I park on the street this time, because for some reason the water district parking lot is nearly full. There must be a shift of employees who work overnight. All the spots with a good vantage point of the house are taken, so I'm forced to park across the street from the house in plain sight.
I keep telling myself that I am waiting to make sure Alex is home, but it could just as well be that I'm afraid to knock on that door and confront him. So I wait. I watch as the lights in the dining room turn on about 6:30 and then turn off again at 6:50. Dinnertime. My stomach gurgles from the sandwich I ate. Then at 8:30 the lights upstairs flip on momentarily, then off again. Bedtime for the boys. I play a guessing game trying to figure out which window goes to the master bedroom. I fight to keep my eyes open. It's cold and I have to keep turning on the car to warm up.
Then, sometime after 9:00, I finally can't fight my exhaustion anymore. I fall asleep behind the wheel.
* * *
I hear pounding. The inside of my car windows are fogged up. The pounding is coming from outside my window.
"Hey, mister, get the hell out of here," a man says.
I'm instantly awake. It's not yet light outside. A yellow sheen of light from a street lamp glows through the fog, so it's not completely dark.
"You hear me, creep? Get off our street," he continues.
I smear the moisture off the driver side window and see a man in police officer's uniform. I turn the key and roll down the window.
But it's not a police officer. It's Alex. Over the top of his pocket is an embroidered patch that reads "Mackey" over top the word "Sterling Correctional Center."
He recognizes me too because he mumbles, "Shit," before turning and walking toward his house. He stops at the driveway and turns back toward me.
"Are you coming in or not? I'm not asking twice."
Chapter 52
"You scared the hell out of my wife with that stunt," Alex says.
It's 5:25 a.m. The house is quiet. We're inside the kitchen. It's decorated with chickens from the wallpaper to the copper statues above the cabinets. Pictures of roosters and hen houses adorn every open space. Dusty knickknacks are set about the room, giving it an unnecessarily claustrophobic feel.
Alex hands me a cup of coffee. There's a
picture of a chicken on it, go figure.
"Sorry about that," I say.
"She said someone was watching the place, so I had to get off shift early and come see what she was going on about," he says. "And then to see it was you? Well, that's just peaches."
"Sorry I inconvenienced you—Frank," I say, emphasizing the fake name. "But I think you owe me, so let's not call it even, just yet, OK?"
"I owe you? What kind of bull are you pitching? I don't owe you anything."
He sits down at the kitchen table, which ironically is set up exactly like his mother's house in Minnesota.
He continues.
"Did you get your daughter out of lock up?" he asks.
"Yes, and I appreciate that."
"Then I don't owe you nothing," he says.
"How about the truth? It's bad enough I've got to deal with Jane's lies—sorry Esther Mae's lies. But you had no reason to lie to me."
He gives a silent chuckle.
"Sounds like you've met my mom then. Nobody but me and Mom called her Esther Mae," he says.
"Why'd you tell me you were Frank and not just explain who you were from the beginning?" I ask.
"I don't appreciate you being here," he says. "I said I didn't want to see you again and I meant it. You think you know everything, but you don't. You married someone who I didn't know. Let me say that again—I didn't know Jane. When she left us in Minnesota, she was Esther Mae. My sweet, but troubled sister. I can't explain her actions after that. Whether she's Jane or Lisa or anyone else—it ain't my job to explain her because I can't."
"I don't need you to explain her," I say, forcing down the frustration in my voice. "I want you to explain yourself. "
"You know, it's not as simple as you make it out to be," he says. "And I don't like you coming around here causing me trouble. I told you that in Spokane. I was going to talk to you one time and then you'd never see me again. What part of that was confusing for you? Why can't you just leave it alone?"
The possible answers to that question could fill a blue notebook.
"Alex, let me ask you something. Let's say your wife disappears tonight—"
"Is that a threat?"
"Um, no. Relax. If your wife all of a sudden disappears, do you think you'd just leave it alone as you suggested? Or would you do everything in your power to find her and find out why she disappeared?"
"It's not the same," he says.
"You're goddamned right, it's not the same and you know it. Now you're sitting here caught in your lies and telling me I don't deserve some answers?"
"You're a stubborn S.O.B aren't you?" He rubs the top of his forehead and places his elbows on the table.
After a moment he says, "Follow me."
* * *
The basement is dark with old paneling and a low ceiling. On the right we pass a laundry room that smells of dryer sheets and mildew. On the left is a family room of some sort that is overrun with junk piled on furniture and scattered about the floor. It's a trash heap that obviously doesn't get used by the family.
At the end of the hall, Alex dials numbers into a combination lock that opens a latch on a solid wood door. He steps into the dark room, but I hang back wondering if this might be Alex's secret murder room or something crazy like that. I imagine the walls being covered in plastic sheets and a set of butcher knives sitting on a silver tray. Needless to say I have very little trust in Alex at this point.
Alex yanks a cord hanging from a bare bulb and dim light fills the large room.
"I lock it so the boys don't come down here and hurt themselves," he says.
The oblong shaped room is a woodshop, not a crime scene. A large chop saw sits on finely oiled counters. Numerous woodworking tools are neatly organized on pegboards next to cabinets with intricate carved designs. The craftsmanship of the room is beautiful and a stark contrast to the rest of the home.
Alex pulls a wooden crate out from a cubbyhole under the counter.
"I can't tell you about my sister, because I don't know anything," he says, handing me the crate.
Inside the crate are neatly stacked, but opened silver envelopes, just like the one's Ella stashed in her kitchen drawer back in Minnesota. Each envelope is the same size, all of them opened at the top.
"Look," he says, nodding to the crate.
He sets the crate down and pulls out an envelope. Empty. I grab another. Empty. I take out several more, realizing that they all must be empty.
"I don't understand," I say.
"I didn't either for a long time," he says. "Look at the return addresses. See anything familiar?"
I flip through the envelopes and nearly choke on my own breath when I see it. The addresses are of all the places Jane and I lived together. That ratty apartment after college. That first house we rented that smelled like cats. The house we bought together and had Aspen in. There were other addresses too, ones I didn't recognize.
"I started to get those empty envelopes a few years after Esther Mae left Minnesota. I'd already moved out of Mom's by then too. At first I thought they were some kind of mistake, but when several started arriving on my birthday each year, I just figured they were from her. They were always empty. No note. Nothing in them. It tore me up inside. Every few months I'd get another. Like she was calling for me, but didn't know what to say. I guess that was part of her bipolar, but it was more than just that. That alone isn't enough to explain her."
"You didn't think to just go to the address and see her? She told you where she was," I say.
"Good thinking, smart guy. Yes, I did. In fact more than once I made the trip to Spokane to see her."
I can see the tears well up in his eyes, even in the dimly lit room. He takes several deep breaths.
"She acted like she didn't know me each time. I went right up to the front door. She answered, holding your little girl—"
He stops for a minute to compose himself.
"She thought I was a selling something. Like she didn't even recognize me. I know people. I can read them. I deal with liars and con men as a guard in that prison every day. I know when someone is trying to pull one over on me. And I can honestly tell you that she did not know who I was. No idea."
"But you told her, right?"
"Yes, of course. She just said, 'sorry, you must be mistaken. I don't have a brother.' I called her Esther Mae, that's when she said her name was Jane. I tried to argue with her, but she was so calm and sure of herself. I even questioned myself—could I have the wrong person? Why would this woman send me empty envelopes?"
"When was this?" I ask.
"Aspen was just a baby."
"When did the envelopes stop coming?" I ask.
"They never really stopped, there was just a two-year gap in between them, which I now know is when she transformed again."
"Transformed?" I ask.
"When she turned into another person—Lisa, but then they started again a few years later when she moved to Port Orchard."
And now it starts to make sense. Well, not make sense, but I understand what she'd done—repeatedly. She transformed into someone else. She didn't fake her death, she simply became another person. She was Esther Mae as a kid and left home to become Jane—the woman I fell in love with who tragically died in a fire. Then she became Lisa, who lived with a woman she knew—her Aunt Ella, before leaving again and moving to Port Orchard and having a relationship with Frank, before drowning in a river—
My train of thought whips in another direction.
"Did she really die in that river?" I ask.
Chapter 53
After everything I've been through. Every trick. Jane and Aspen's deaths and quasi-resurrection. The discovery of Grandma Ella. After all that, I never truly considered that Jane was actually still alive—alive again I mean.
"You have to tell me," I plead. "Did she die in that river or not?"
"I don't know," Alex says and I believe him. He's hurting just like me, I can see it in his eyes. "The letters stopped a f
ew months before she drowned."
"What aren't you telling me then?" I ask.
He takes a deep breath and runs his hand along the wood-working bench.
"I don't think she's gone," he says. "This is exactly what she did last time after the fire in New York. She went silent for a couple years, then started up again somewhere else."
"You know she was with your mom in Minnesota, right?" I ask.
"Yes, that's why I refuse to talk to my mother. I haven't seen Mom in years and have no desire to see her. I didn't know Esther Mae stayed there until after she went to Port Orchard. Mom kept it from me. She also refuses to confront Esther Mae about her actions."
"She's an enabler," I say.
"In the truest form, yes."
"Did you go see Esther Mae—Jane—in Port Orchard?" I ask.
"Yes, but there's more to it. This is why I made up a story, I'm sorry. I just wanted to get Libby some help and to get her back to you. I didn't want to get involved and I didn't know Libby at all. She of course, didn't know me either, so I couldn't exactly go talk to her. And if I had have told you who I really was, and that I was chasing some woman who I knew was my sister, a woman who acts as if she totally doesn't know me, then you wouldn't have believed me anyway. I couldn't win."
"You should have just told me the truth," I say, attempting to shame him.
"You would have spit in my face. You practically did anyway."
He's right. I would have.
"I went to Port Orchard," he says. "She put Frank's address on the envelope. I tried to talk to her; but again, she just acted like she didn't know me. Practically called the cops on me. I saw Aspen and only by chance learned her name was Libby. She had a friend over at the house and she called her name. Otherwise I never would have thought to look her up."
"Look her up? What do you mean?"
"That girl looks just like her mom—the girl I remember when we were kids. I knew it was her, my niece. I prayed that she didn't have whatever mental disorder it was that Esther Mae had. I didn't want her to be alone because her mom decided to be a different person. And I was right."
